Middle Aged Thoughts from Scotland

Cartoon Week 5 part II

I accompanied my wife to Alcudia today. We went by ourselves because the kids were happy to sport swimsuits and jump in and out of the pool rather than go to Mass. The journey required some marital self-counselling due to my wife nervously driving not only a new car, but also on the wrong side of the road, combined with my anxiety of being a passenger and navigator. A brief stop at the end of the road together with some strong words from my wife put me into a more straightforward place. A tense but helpful peace then reigned for the rest of the journey (well mostly, parking was a bit more tense).

Whilst my wife attended the ancient church, I wondered around the wall town and into the pile of English and German tourists aimlessly shuffling from one market stall to another. It was not a pleasant experience and after a while I decided to head back to the church via much quieter, peaceful and architectually interesting streets. I found a bench by the church and took out my cartoon work from last week. Today was the last day to submit the story and get comments back so in the shade of the church I did my best to create the missing scenes. It didn’t take long thankfully because after I had arranged the finished articles on the ground to take a picture to post, my wife texted me saying the world’s shortest mass was over.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I submitted the work. It wasn’t perfect but that’s fine because now I have crossed an inertia barrier to drawing comics. Whether I continue or not doesn’t matter, I achieved something important today, I opened up new areas of creative potential. That gives me much happiness.

He’s the submitted strip:

Update:

If for nobody’s benefit other than a reminder to myself, here is my tutor’s comment on the stip:

This is amazing! There is such a clear arc of story and action in here–something happens, problems need to be solved, nuanced experiences arrive that make your character come through something. Wonderful! I hope you do keep working with this and all that you have done. I am SO glad that this has helped you kick in the door of inertia! Great work, Sandy!